中国近年来消费需求增长乏力的原因探析

消费需求增长乏力是近年来我国宏观经济面临的突出问题,这是居民消费能力、消费动力和消费环境三方面因素共同作用的结果。首先,居民收入增加与GDP增长不同步导致居民消费能力有限,而收入差距不断拉大则引起消费能力分配失衡;其次,未来收入和支出的预期不稳定、消费信贷制度滞后等在很大程度上降低了居民消费动力;最后,相关配套体制和设施不健全、与市场经济不协调的消费习惯等也都影响了消费需求的增加。     

论大众文化消费及其特征

文化消费是现代人在物质生活得到丰富的同时进行精神状态的自我调整,充实感情和复归人性的一种重要方式。大众文化更是掀起了一股文化消费的大众化浪潮,以满足人们的娱乐消费需求,大众文化也成为大众传媒时代满足大众闲暇时间的文化消费需求的最好形式。大众文化消费有其独特的消费文化特征。     

The Effects of Spousal Health on the Decision to Smoke: Evidence on Consumption Externalities, Altruism and Learning Within the Household

Married individuals are healthier than single individuals though the reasons are not well understood. Individuals with spouses/or partners are less likely to smoke. We explore the relationship between health and marital status by analyzing three potential channels through which marriage affects smoking, i.e., consumption externalities (one spouse's smoking affects the other spouse's welfare), altruism (one spouse reduces smoking in response to the other spouse's bad health), and learning about risks of smoking from the health experience of one's spouse. We find spousal health does not affect smoking due to altruism or learning within the household but do find evidence for consumption externalities.     

顾客消费情感对顾客满意感的影响

作者在广州某高校内的餐厅进行了一次实证研究,探讨顾客感觉中的服务质量、顾客情感和顾客满意感之间的关系。数据分析结果表明,顾客感觉中的软质量直接影响顾客餐后的正面情感,而顾客餐后的正面情感直接影响顾客满意感;顾客对软、硬质量的期望与服务实绩之差对顾客餐后的正面情感、顾客满意感都有显著的直接影响,顾客对软质量的期望与服务实绩之差对顾客餐后的负面情感也有显著的直接影响。此外,顾客餐前的情绪也会影响顾客餐后的情感和顾客对自己就餐经历的评估。     

新贫困视域下乡村转型的困厄与重构路径

中国社会转型的重要背景之一是全球消费社会的到来。 这使得新穷人现象日渐凸显,并成为影响甚至主导整个社会转型的核心线索。 作为新穷人的典型表现,乡村新贫困既包括在城乡二元结构下,村民难以获得以城市生活方式为参照的社会公认生活水准而引发的结构性贫困,也包括由消费欲望激发的社会心理性贫困。 由此,乡村消费转型表现为如下困境:私人消费中,个体消费认同在地和脱嵌的困境以及家庭消费规范物质化和人伦的两难;集体消费中,消费品“上移冶和“下乡冶的悖论。 为应对这些困境,必须从消费角度,破解“新穷困冶的结构性和文化困境,实行新型城镇化和新农村建设并举。     

Then press enter: digital payment technology and the history of telephone interface

The internet and other digital networks in the U.S. (and beyond) remain essentially an upgrade of the national telephone network built by AT&T over the first half of the twentieth century, and digital payment remains tethered to telephony at the level of infrastructure. Telephone history also continues to inform digital payment at the level of interface. Debit card readers feature a keypad nearly identical to those introduced (also by AT&T) to the dialling public a half-century ago on touch-tone telephones. In this essay I highlight the development of the touch-tone keypad as a transformative payment technology. There have been three great leaps forward in the history of telephone interface: the dial, the keypad and the touch screen. Each corresponds to a period of technological transformation in the telephone industry and society more broadly: the rotary dial and automation, touch-tone keypads and digitization, and touch screens and computerization. The successful careers of the dial and the keypad, especially when read in tandem, suggest that touch screens will alter the everyday economics of retail payment even more radically than its predecessors. I also describe a broader trajectory of digital naturalization, whereby telephone numbers have proliferated into a personal identification number, passwords and a plethora of personalized information. Payments increasingly circulate today as subsets of personal information within the vast sea of big data. Payment apps are demonstrating a capacity to reorganize retail transactions on a scale as vast as any technology since the cash register. The history of retail payment finds the point of sale heading from the till into shoppers’ pockets. As a result, consumers are increasingly shouldering the costs of purchasing, maintaining, upgrading and securing the technology used for everyday transactions.     

Consumption Commitments and Habit Formation

We analyze the implications of household‐level adjustment costs for the dynamics of aggregate consumption. We show that an economy in which agents have “consumption commitments” is approximately equivalent to a habit formation model in which the habit stock is a weighted average of past consumption if idiosyncratic risk is large relative to aggregate risk. Consumption commitments can thus explain the empirical regularity that consumption is excessively sensitive and excessively smooth, findings that are typically attributed to habit formation. Unlike habit formation and other theories, but consistent with empirical evidence, the consumption commitments model also predicts that excess sensitivity and smoothness vanish for large shocks. These results suggest that behavior previously attributed to habit formation may be better explained by adjustment costs. We develop additional testable predictions to further distinguish the commitment and habit models and show that the two models have different welfare implications.     

地区收入、食品价格与恩格尔系数

本文以2016年我国31个省级地区截面数据为样本,构建扩展模型考察恩格尔系数与收入、食品价格之间的关系。研究发现,恩格尔系数与地区收入存在显著的负相关性,纳入食品价格后收入对恩格尔系数的影响变得更为显著,二者关系满足恩格尔定律。恩格尔系数和以地区食品价格平价代表的食品价格之间显著正相关,若再考虑其他因素,则食品价格对恩格尔系数的影响会稍有减弱。进一步将食品区分为生活必需型食品与非生活必需型食品,测算得到的基本恩格尔系数、高阶恩格尔系数与收入之间仍呈负相关关系,但与基本恩格尔系数相比,高阶恩格尔系数与收入之间的负相关性更弱。恩格尔系数受生活必需型食品价格的影响强于非生活必需型食品价格的影响,基本恩格尔系数主要受生活必需型食品价格的影响,而高阶恩格尔系数同时受到两类食品价格的影响。     

新疆产业结构变迁与恩格尔系数协整关系的实证研究

通过构造一个由消费结构、城镇居民收入水平、第二产业结构和第三产业结构四个变量组成的VAR模型,对新疆城乡居民的消费结构与产业结构相互作用的关系及其动态特征进行了实证研究。根据设定的模型、格兰杰因果检验、脉冲响应函数、预测方差分解和协整检验,发现新疆城镇居民消费结构会影响第二产业结构的转换,随着居民收入水平的提高,恩格尔系数呈下降趋势。城乡居民收入水平对产业结构升级产生一定影响。     

浙江流通产业演进动力研究

 本文分析了生产方式变革和消费需求升级及其矛盾对流通产业演进的影响,指出“生产方式引致的大量化”和“消费需求引致的大量化”在时间、空间、集散等方面发生的矛盾是推动流通不断演化与发展的动力。通过构建浙江流通演进的动力模型,实证分析“生产方式引致的大量化”和“消费需求的大量化”的相关系数为0.741,两者对浙江流通演进均具有正向促进作用,路径系数分别为0.68和0.42,前者的作用大于后者。